International Journal of English Linguistics; Vol. 10, No. 1; 2020

3. Area Description 
As has been mentioned above, at present abbreviation is regarded as one of the ways of language development. 
In the more traditional way at the linguistic structural level the crux of the matter consists in breaking the old 
word structure and creating shorter and easily perceptible language forms to be later lexicalized and in the course 
of time become part of the national language vocabulary. 
Thus, in the dictionaries abbreviation is accompanied by the following definitions: “Middle English 
abbreviacioun “contraction, shortening”, borrowed from Anglo-French abreviation, borrowed from Late Latin 
abbrevi
ā
ti
ō
n-, abbrevi
ā
ti
ō
, 
from
 
abbrevi
ā
re “to abbreviate” + Latin -ti
ō
n-, -ti
ō
,
suffix of action nouns. Thus, 
derived from the Latin word ‘brevis’ and translated as ‘short’, the term means a concise form of lexical units that 
permits to perceive part as a whole; “1. A shortened form of a word, such as ‘Dr’ for Doctor or ‘PTO’ for ‘please 
turn over’ (URL: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abbreviation). The dictionary also indicates that 
some of the abbreviations can only be used in writing, and not in oral speech—so they are marked accordingly. 
The Merriam-Webster dictionary provides such examples as ‘Amt’ as an abbreviation for ‘amount’ and ‘USA’ for 
the United States of America to illustrate that abbreviation is a shortened form of a written word of phrase used 
in place of the whole word or phrase. The second suggested meaning is the result of abbreviating something, the 
abridgement as in “I know you would not be satisfied with an 
abbreviation
of its contents, and you shall have 
the whole, save, perhaps, a few passages here and there of merely temporary interest to the writer” by Anne 
Brontë (URL: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abbreviation). In modern English abbreviations can 
also be classified into contractions and initialisms. Initialisms in their turn are subdivided into acronyms and 
alphabetisms. Under contractions we usually understand abbreviations that are coined by the way of omitting 
several letters or syllables and merging the initial and final letters as well as abruption of several parts of a word. 
And it goes without saying that the most recent example within these terms is “Brexit”. 
Abbreviations are not homogeneous linguistic units. For instance, it is a well-established fact that within 
abbreviations initialisms are subdivided into alphabetisms and acronyms. Acronyms are constructed from the 
first letters of long phrases: PR
 
for
 
public relations, CEO
 
for